Decision-making

• In Ghana, for example, the government estimates a staggering deficit of 1.8 million homes.
• Many households don’t get basic services either: 28.6% rely on wells for water, over a third use public latrines and one in ten dispose of waste indiscriminately.
• Ghana’s housing market suffers from inadequate regulation.
• We are urban and housing studies scholars who research issues of housing in Ghana.

Findings

• The Ashanti region, with Kumasi as its capital, has the highest proportion of compound houses in Ghana (62.8% against a national average of 57.3%).
• The courtyard serves as a significant space for social interactions and inter-household activities.
• Households within the compound share common facilities such as toilets, kitchens, drying lines, water, and electricity meters.
• Inadequate sanitation: The absence of toilet facilities in some compound houses forced households, including children, to rely on public toilets.
• They faced challenges such as a distracting environment, lack of suitable work spaces, and unreliable internet connectivity.

The way forward

• A recent seminar involving policymakers and stakeholders in Ghana’s housing sector yielded a consensus that housing policy and supply should put the needs of the poor first.
• The existing pro-market housing policy does not help the poor to get decent accommodation.
• Regulation should focus not only on the advance rent period but also on the provision of basic facilities.
• Thus it is crucial to initiate a conversation about sustainable and context-specific housing design, and use of local construction materials.

• In the wake of the Russian invasion and war in Ukraine, the United Nations (UN) appears to be preparing to resurrect a global disarmament process which was discontinued more than 30 years ago.
• UN special sessions on disarmament were held in 1978, 1982, and 1988, but a fourth never occurred.

Disarmament machinery

• For the disarmament agenda to progress, its machinery needs to be revisited.
• It could also organise negotiations towards a general and complete disarmament (GCD) agenda, as per Scrap Weapons’ work on transparency mechanisms and a draft framework for a treaty on general and complete disarmament.

Defence spending on the rise

• In the days that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many states increased their defence spending.
• In all, 29 European states pledged a total of more than US$209 billion (£163.5 billion) in new defence funding.
• Meanwhile, global military spending continues to rise and has passed an estimated US$2.2 trillion.

New Agenda for Peace

• In light of this, there has never been a more pressing time for SSOD-IV to be adopted as part of the UN’s New Agenda for Peace.
• With the recent release of the New Agenda for Peace policy brief, as a forward-thinking document paving the way for a revitalised UN, the implementation of disarmament processes more suited to our current era seems possible.
• The activation of a special session on disarmament could allow for the development of an effective programme of peace and prevention.
• But for the first time in 30 years, mentions of a special session on disarmament in the UN’s New Agenda for Peace make a renaissance in disarmament look possible.

• The armed conflict in Cameroon between separatist groups and the military is in its sixth year.
• Armed groups are fighting for secession of the English-speaking north-west and south-west regions and establishment of the Republic of Ambazonia.
• However, the minority English-speaking population has complained for decades of unfair treatment by the francophone-dominated state.
• Recent figures indicate 628,000 internally displaced people and 87,000 Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria, out of a total population of some four million in the anglophone regions.

Current impasse in peace efforts

• The foremost obstacle is the Cameroon government’s desire to crush the separatists and achieve a military victory.
• While government forces are better equipped and more numerous, this is a guerrilla war fought in difficult terrain.
• The apparent disconnect between the political leadership living securely in the diaspora and the longstanding suffering of the civilian population in the conflict zones is another factor that militates against peace talks.
• All this has led to a palpable shift in the mood among local civilians, with war-weariness and a strong desire for conflict resolution.

Way forward

• Perhaps it is time to listen to these voices from Ground Zero for their perspectives on how to resolve the conflict.
• One research participant succinctly summed up a possible pathway:
  Ceasefire is the first button that should be clicked … [and] all the political detainees should be released.
• After their release, dialogue and a referendum and the people will decide.
• Ceasefire is the first button that should be clicked … [and] all the political detainees should be released.

• Since the implementation of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement in 1988, both Liberal and Conservative governments have pursued and continue to pursue more free-trade zones with additional partners in Europe, the Americas and the Pacific Rim.
• Economic and social criticisms of free trade, particularly from more left-wing positions, are well-established and longstanding.

Conservative shift

• They also reflect not so much an economic critique as they do a preoccupation with social and cultural policy.
• In fact, these criticisms are tied to many of the broader transformations that are beginning to characterize contemporary conservative politics.
• Modern-day conservative enthusiasm for free trade consolidated in the 1980s as a component of a broader shift to neoliberalism that, while felt across the political spectrum, was particularly pronounced for the right.

Class divisions

• Vance and Josh Hawley — have developed a more comprehensive form of opposition.
• Vance has criticized free trade for empowering a cosmopolitan, socially progressive urban class at the expense of the average American worker.
• Shut out of wage and labour mobility, he says these working-class Americans are unable to establish a base of financial independence necessary for thriving communities.
• Read more:
  The two key issues on the table to bring Canada back into NAFTA

Canada’s conservative history

• But recent federal Conservative leaders, while generally supportive of further trade liberalization, have alluded to changing their thinking on trade and foreign policy.
• Former Conservative Party of Canada leader Erin O’Toole, for example, broadly referred to a “Canada First” approach that emphasized greater industrial self-sufficiency along with skepticism towards China.
• John A. Macdonald’s national policy, as pursued by Conservative governments throughout the early 20th century, levied high tariffs on foreign imported goods to help Canadian manufacturing withstand American competition.